Keep it to Yourself
by JoaoCondor
Summary: Emily Prentiss kept it together. Always. While others worried, or cried, or overthought things, Emily Prentiss just did what needed to be done. It was a skill that had brought her to the head of the BAU, and one she was perversely proud of. Emily Prentiss kept it together. Until she didn't.


Author's Note: This was just something that popped into my head after the Season 14 premiere and wouldn't leave. I might add to it, or it might stay a one-shot, I haven't really decided. Obviously nothing copyrighted or recognizable belongs to me.

* * *

The moment the door to her condo shut behind her, Emily Prentiss deflated. Dropping her bags on the floor and kicking her boots off haphazardly, she couldn't find it in herself to care about her usual obsessive tidiness. She was exhausted.

Everything was as she'd left it but nothing felt right. She flicked on the light in the kitchen and made her way to the fridge, filling a glass with ice and then scotch. All the way to the top. Even Rossi would reproach her she knew, but didn't care. She took her scotch into the bedroom and left it on the bedside table while she secured her gun in the wall safe and made her way into the en suite bathroom to turn on the shower. She undressed as she made her way back to her drink, the bathroom filling with steam behind her as she left her shirt, pants, bra, and underwear where they landed. She'd pick them up later. Probably. Her scotch was nearly half empty by the time she crossed the five or six steps back to the bathroom, and she left it on the counter beside the sink as she stepped under the scalding spray.

That was where she broke.

Everything that she managed to push back and compartmentalize over the past days, weeks – hell, probably years if she really thought about it – just hit her like a truck.

Reid and Garcia, Merva, Meadowes, Cyrus, Reid, Scratch, Stephen, Hotch, Reid.

Oh God, Reid. It was always Reid.

Emily had known – for years now – that she had feelings for Reid. At this point just calling them 'feelings' was really understating it. She was in love with him, she knew – had known for some time. But that ship had sailed and nothing would happen there - she had known that for some time too. There had been a window, sometime before Ian Doyle had resurfaced in her life, where she and Reid could have been something. The signs had all been there and she was fairly certain her feelings hadn't been unreciprocated. But Doyle had resurfaced, and she had made a decision, and whether or not it had been the right one didn't even matter, but it had been the end of any possibility of something more with Reid.

They had buried her, mourned for her, and she had let them. No matter her reasons, it had been a betrayal. It had completely shattered any trust he may have had in her. She couldn't come back from that, wouldn't ask for anything from him after that. It wouldn't be fair – that much she knew.

So Emily had worked to rebuild trust, and friendship, with Reid – with all of them – and she had succeeded. She couldn't, and wouldn't, ask for more. She was deeply thankful for what she now had and she wouldn't risk it, but that didn't mean that her feelings for Reid had gone away.

And now? Well, now she was not only Emily Prentiss, certified romantic disaster, but she was also his boss. So her feelings for Reid were just another addition to the locked box in her mind where she kept all her other poor choices and ill-fated intentions.

But she was still the reigning Queen of Compartmentalization, so she had been able to handle it and remain professional and friendly with Reid, to manage the team through Scratch, and Stephen's death, Reid's incarceration, her own abduction, Barnes' witch hunt, and now the offshoot of Benjamin Cyrus' cult.

Apparently this was her breaking point though. Because now, sitting with her back pressed up to the wall of her shower, scalding water beating down on her, Emily honestly couldn't imagine going into work tomorrow and arranging for trauma counsellors, psych assessments, improved security and access protocol. She couldn't imagine herself being of any use or comfort to Garcia, who had been understandably traumatized, or JJ, with her constant motherly concern for Reid. And she definitely couldn't see herself maintaining her grip on professionalism around Reid when all she wanted to do was hold him and tell him she loved him and beg him to please be more careful.

So she stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then picked herself up and turned the water off and finished her drink. She dried off quickly and wrapped herself in her fluffiest robe – a gift from Garcia – before returning to the kitchen and refilling her scotch. No ice this time.


End file.
